It’s been a tough decade. She was roundly criticized for being a diva, including after an infamous moment caught on video in which she licked a doughnut at a California bakery in 2015. In 2017, a suicide bombing took the lives of 22 people and injured hundreds at the Manchester, England, stop of her Dangerous Woman tour.
A year later, her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller died of an accidental drug overdose at 26. All the while, Grande was still making music, releasing the albums Sweetener and the multimillion-selling Thank U, Next. “I was doing so much therapy, and I was dealing with PTSD and all different kinds of grief and depression and anxiety,” she revealed in 2025.
“They were dark times, and the music brought so much levity and so did the experience. But it poured out with urgency, and it was made with urgency, and it was a means of survival.”
Then, in 2021, Grande landed one of the most sought after parts in Hollywood, playing Glinda in Wicked.